The Connell Short Guide to Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde

Stevenson’s short novel, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, became an immediate best-seller when first published in 1886, selling 40,000 copies in England alone during the first six months after its publication. Is it “a work of philosophic intention, or simply the most ingenious and irresponsible of fictions”, asked Stevenson’s friend, Henry James. His answer was very much the former. Jekyll and Hyde is an immensely complex work, open to all kinds of interpretations and, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to which it is often compared, suggests there is a monstrous side to human beings which some event can easily trigger.